Scandinavian-American English - Tracing Influences of the Scandinavian Immigrants Languages on English in the United States

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0 (B), Free University of Berlin (John-F.-Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies), course: Varieties of North American English, language: English, abstract: Within the framework of language varieties, language contact and bilingualism in the United States, the subject to be studied closer in this paper will be the kind of English that has been spoken in the areas of the U.S. that are characterized by large-scale Scandinavian immigration. The question will be if the English language that already prevailed in these areas might have been influenced in any way by the language of the new settlers and what exactly can be traced of this interference. As there are a lot of different aspects to this subject, some restrictions regarding which of these to concentrate on will have to be made. The most important restriction is that focus will lie on Norwegian and Swedish aspects, though Danish issues are considered in passing rather than in depth. With respect to a limited extent of this paper Icelandic and Finnish issues will not be dealt with at all. These and some other considerations will be resumed after a more general introduction to Scandinavian immigration to the U.S. In the next chapter a short account will be given of the historical development of the immigration process, settlement patterns as well as characteristics of the people and cultures that have come into contact during this process. The third chapter treats some theoretical ideas and concepts which are useful in this kind of study, whereas the fourth chapter eventually deals with findings and conclusions made by researchers in this field of study. An overview of researchers' opinions and descriptions of this linguistic phenomenon will round off this report.